But the six-foot-six Halifax Rainmen guard knows his proficiency from the arc will improve. And, after being touched by a pair of deadly natural disasters in the span of six years, he also knows how to put a minor shooting slump into perspective.

Johnson, 25, was named the National Basketball League of Canada’s player of the week on Monday after scoring a combined 30 points in two Halifax wins, including a dramatic game-winning basket in the dying seconds against the Summerside Storm.

Although he has converted just 28 per cent of his three-point attempts, far below his career norm, he’s contributing in other areas and is logging 30.8 minutes per game, tops on the Rainmen.

"It’s not all about scoring all the time. It’s doing the little things," said the native of Tyler, Texas, who also leads the club with 18 triples. He ranks third in rebounds per game (5.8) and is fourth in scoring (12.5).

"I’m known to be a shooter and my shot hasn’t been falling but I feel like I can pick it up."

The shooting guard played NCAA Division I ball with the Iowa Hawkeyes, where he gained notoriety for drilling five treys in the final 61 seconds of a contest against Indiana in January 2008. He spent a portion of one season in the NBA Development League and then headed overseas to pursue his career in Romania, China and Japan.

In Tokyo this year, he was playing with several other Americans under the guidance of former San Antonio Spurs coach Bob Hill and having the time of his life when the world literally came crashing down around him.

"It was like eight minutes of shaking, dishes falling, my TV, PlayStation, everything was falling," he said Tuesday, recalling the killer earthquake that buckled Japan on March 11, setting off a destructive tsunami that swamped the Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant and triggered a nuclear meltdown.

Johnson had just awakened — it was an off-day for the team and he’d slept in — when the shockwaves began rattling his apartment building. He’d never experienced an earthquake before and wasn’t sure how to respond, though he remembers fearing that he might not survive.

"I was just shaking. I was like, man, what do I do? In my mind, I thought I was gone, I thought it was gonna come down."

He eventually reached his team manager by telephone and was advised to leave his apartment and find a safe area away from buildings. He located several teammates and they ended up walking to a nearby park to wait out the uncertainty.

Tokyo, about 290 kilometres from Fukushima City in the hardest-hit area, was spared most of the devastation of the 9.0 magnitude quake and the resulting tsunami. It wiped out whole towns in the northeast, leaving 20,000 people dead or missing and destroying more than 800,000 homes.

"When the earthquake and things happened, it was a sad situation, just from watching it on TV, how many families lost their houses, people dying, seeing people floating, it reminded me of Katrina," Johnson said, thinking back to the massive hurricane that claimed more than 1,800 lives and displaced hundreds of thousands along the Gulf Coast in August 2005.

"I’m from East Texas so Katrina was like right there next to us when that was going on and they ended up coming to my junior college, the evacuees came to my college (Tyler Community College). We had to help those guys out."

Though Johnson and his American teammates managed to escape the Japan disaster physically unscathed, they decided three days later to leave, fearing the worst as the situation at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex deteriorated. Their team and two others folded, but the other clubs in the league resumed play after about three weeks, he said.

Looking back, he manages to chuckle that the first quake he experienced in a country that frequently trembles due to seismic activity was the most powerful in its history. But the sardonic humour can’t disguise the fact that the tragedy has changed his outlook on life.

"It just made me think about how thankful we are every day just to wake because you never know when you’re gonna leave," he said.

HALIFAX (6-4): Guard Christian Upshaw of Halifax, who broke a bone in his elbow on Nov. 3 in London, hopes to resume shooting on Friday and is still aiming for a January return . . . Halifax has won three in a row and six of its last eight to climb into third place.

SUMMERSIDE (5-7): The Storm haven’t played since last week’s 97-96 setback to the Rainmen at Credit Union Place . . . The team’s top offensive threats are Mike Williams (15.8 ppg), Julian Allen (15.7) and Chris Cayole (15.6) . . . Summerside has lost four in a row, including the first three dates in a six-game homestand, and is 2-7 over its last nine.

OSHAWA (6-8): The expansion Power have played nine of their 14 games against London and Quebec, who are a combined 20-8. Oshawa has gone 3-6 against those teams . . . The Power knocked off Halifax 115-111 in their first meeting on Nov. 27 in Oshawa behind Akeem Wright’s 33 points . . . Wright (16.6 ppg) and Brandon Robinson (14.8) lead the team in scoring.